Bad Science comes in many forms, from Moon landing deniers to creationists. It’s not my field, but I would guess that the biggest impact is on the health science. There, bad thinking literally kills, and it kills thousands every year. Millions? Maybe. The flavors of health folly are as varied as the fields of health science itself: HIV-deniers, anti-vaccine promulgators, homeopathists, diet fads, and on and on.
There are the Good Guys too, out there to strike down what they know to be off ill health. But you will rarely find one of the caliber of Ben Goldacre (of BadScience.net), who takes down the huge corporation of one Gillian McKeith in an article in the Guardian. McKeith is a person of Sylvia-Browne-sized capacity for misdirection and misinformation, and has the potential to do a lot of harm. Good thing people like Goldacre are around.
Read that whole article to see how it’s done, folks. But here’s a great money quote:
“Ignorance is like cholera,” [Sir Muir Gray] says. “It cannot be controlled by the individual alone: it requires the organised efforts of society.”
Yup.
March 20th, 2007 at 6:59 am
Nice article, great quote. I also like this one:
March 20th, 2007 at 7:20 am
The article’s a little confusing on one point for US readers; here, there are legitimate professionals called “nutritionists”, but I gather there is no such thing in the UK.
March 20th, 2007 at 7:43 am
Yep, bad thinking (the ban on DDT) literally kills millions of people (via malaria) every year.
March 20th, 2007 at 7:47 am
Damnit, you missed a perfectly good opportunity for a ‘Doctor Woo’ joke
March 20th, 2007 at 7:58 am
One of my favourite blogs, badscience. He’s been fighting the Awful Poo Lady for a few years now, always in a good-science and entertaining manner.
Robert
March 20th, 2007 at 8:06 am
JWK – there are nutritionists in the UK, but McKeith isn’t one. We even have them available on the NHS (but then we have reiki ‘healing’ available on the NHS, so that isn’t a resounding endorsement).
March 20th, 2007 at 8:28 am
The trick to a con-job is to get out before anyone suspects. My goodness! She’s too greedy NOT to have her empire fall down around her ears.
March 20th, 2007 at 8:41 am
In the UK, “nutritionist” is not a protected title – literally anyone can call themselves a nutritionist. The real, protected, professional title is “dietician”.
Ben also has a particularly good article on predictive value, which I frequently find myself linking to in all sorts of contexts. Well worth a read.
March 20th, 2007 at 8:47 am
All I can say is dang… she got her ass handed to her.
March 20th, 2007 at 9:59 am
She really is a nasty piece of work but some people seem to think that Bad Science was too hard on her because after all “she is just trying to help people” and that’s just arrogance or elistism to call her pronouncements or qualifications into doubt. I say they are idiots, humiliating the morbidly obese on prime time telly in the name of entertainment is not “just trying to help people”
March 20th, 2007 at 10:12 am
There’s a very good book on the topic of pseudoscience in medicine called “Bad Medicine”… maybe you’ve heard of it?
March 20th, 2007 at 11:17 am
“Tell a big enough lie, loud enough and long enough and people will believe you,,,”
Sound familiar?
The entire concept of mega dose nutirent supplementation is fraught with misaprehension. There is a lot of research in this area. Some is very suggestive of potential benefit. I expect as we develop our understanding of the interaction of genetics and environmental stimulii, we will eventually see that SOME people benefit from one type of vitamin, mineral or anti-oxident suplmentation. Without knowing which genes are turned on or suppressed by these environmental interactions, we’re essentially floundering around in the dark when it comes to supplements. Right now we’re limited to statistical analyses of large groups to see if one supplement or another has a desirable effect.
I have used mega doses of vitamins c and b complex for 40 years, mainly because I don’t eat a really balanced diet, so those water soluable vitamins are ingested for much the same reason I wear a seat belt when driving. Might not be needed, but at least they won’t hurt.
I eat a lot of garlic,,,mainly because I LIKE garlic.I also eat a lot of dark chocolate, coffee and the occasional green tea. Also, because I LIKE those. It’s amusing to me to see someones research come along and point out the anti oxident benefits of these but it would make not the slightest difference if someone else said the exact opposite. It’s my preference.
Should I live a long, healthy life, that would offer absolutly no proof of the benefit of such substances. It would probably only say that I have good genes and some good luck.(Dang, the truck missed him by an inch,,,)
I enjoy the research of such companies as the Life Extension Foundation but I take such research with a grain of salt. Just because a bacteria with the highest levels of Super Oxide Dismutase known can live inside a nuclear reactor doesn’t mean it will make my life longer. On the other hand, since anti oxidents deter inflamation, perhaps it will help with my bursitis and tendinitis and that could allow me to continue lifting weights, which I will probably do even though it causes me some pain. Hey, I’ll try most things once,,,but if I see no benefit in 30 days, I’ll cease using it. Why waste money? I could just use the old reliable aspirin, but the side effects are not all that tolerable.
Anyway, the point of this diatribe is that it’s up to the individual to choose potentially wacky ideas. It’s not up to the likes of what’s her name to push such, certainly not in a major media. She is no better than tele-evangelists and for pretty much the same reason. (God needs your money. Send it to Him, in care of me,,,)
,,,and it really, REALLY pisses me off that she attempts to cloak herself in an aura of respectability with her claim of having a PhD. Why is it illegal to misrepresnet oneself as a medical doctor, but any damn fool can claim a PhD without the slightest fear of legal repercussions? That’s just not right!
GAry 7
March 20th, 2007 at 1:03 pm
“There’s a very good book on the topic of pseudoscience in medicine called “Bad Medicineâ€â€¦ maybe you’ve heard of it?”
I was disappointed in that book. I was expecting something on par with Bad Astronomy (silly me), but it mostly just seemed to be one long “lose weight” rant. No matter what subject he was discussing it always seemed to come back to that.
March 20th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
[Stands and Applauds]
Next we just have to take up torches and pitchforks and advance on Kevin Mark Trudeau.
March 20th, 2007 at 2:28 pm
I have seen Trudeau on several T.V. infomercials. The man has a very wide scope in things he is selling. Always wondered if anything he sold had any validity.
I remember the “corel” one a bit. He said people living on Okinawa lived longer and were healthier because they consumed “corel. I lived on Okinawa for 12 years and never once saw anyone eating it, or even selling pills with it.
I think it’s the rice…
March 20th, 2007 at 7:00 pm
Ahh, the “DDT Ban” Myth. This one draws a deep (but narrow) range of suckers. Would you like powder or premix, and what credit card will you be using today? What’s that- you don’t actually live in a region with active malaria outbreaks? Sorry, we sell targeted countermeasures for judicious application, not the outdoor equivalent of triclosan.
March 20th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
People do live longer in Okinawa, but scientists and doctors (real ones) have already pointed to a healthy diet involving fresh locally grown and caught foods and a positive stress-limiting outlook on life among the population as the probable “secret”. Wow, a simple and obvious answer to long life, ain’t science great?
March 20th, 2007 at 11:45 pm
Ibrahim,
That’s all very well, but when can I buy it in pill form?
March 21st, 2007 at 3:09 am
Homosex….oooops Homopaths, chiros, osteopaths,ect, should not be allowed to pratice on poor unsuspecting victims. They sometimes do serious harm, which real docs have trouble treating after the harm has been done.
March 21st, 2007 at 4:32 am
John Kennedy – in the UK, anyone can call themselves a nutritionist. Sometimes, people doing proper academic work on nutrition may use the term, though I get the sense McKeith and others are making that less comon.
March 21st, 2007 at 5:39 am
“Ed Minchau
Says:
March 20th, 2007 at 7:43 am
Yep, bad thinking (the ban on DDT) literally kills millions of people (via malaria) every year.”
So you’d rather we just wipe out peregrine falcons and many other species of animals that have done nothing to us then?
March 21st, 2007 at 6:34 am
It has been decades but I still remember a heart-breaking example we studied in law school as to how bad bad science can be. Oncologists had told the parents of a young girl that they needed to remove an eye to have any chance of keeping a cancer from metastisizing. Instead, the parents took the child to a chiropractor who told them he could cure her. Two months later, when the girl’s face was immensely swollen, the parents took the girl back to the oncologists, who said it was too late, and the girl died shortly thereafter. The chiropractor was indicted, I believe, for second degree murder (a stretch perhaps, but he certainly deserved at a minimum a public flogging, as did the parents, in my opinion). As long as charlatans can make piles of money by deception, and the public is so uneducated and gullible, these battles will go on, and so it is not just a one time struggle but a never-ending challenge for all rational folks. Fight the good fight, day and night.
March 21st, 2007 at 7:36 am
Angelo, homosexuals should not be allowed to pratice on poor unsuspecting victims. Neither should heterosexuals. I think we call that rape.
March 21st, 2007 at 8:22 am
“Ed Minchau
Says:
March 20th, 2007 at 7:43 am
Yep, bad thinking (the ban on DDT) literally kills millions of people (via malaria) every year.â€
Damien says:
So you’d rather we just wipe out peregrine falcons and many other species of animals that have done nothing to us then?
I say: I think the issue is how DDT is used. Indoors, it will neither harm humans nor get into the food chain which ultimately harms birds, but it will definitely harm mosquitoes. The outright ban on DDT may have been an overreaction – one that is responsible for millions of deaths, particularly in Africa.
J. D.
March 21st, 2007 at 11:02 am
J.D., see my message above. DDT has never been banned for indoor anti-malarial use. Only widespread use as a pesticide was banned, which is for the best — such use was encouraging the spread of DDT-resistant mosquitoes.
So no, the ban on DDT is absolutely not “responsible for millions of deaths.”
March 21st, 2007 at 10:15 pm
Ben Goldacre is brilliant. Check out his forthcoming book, aptly titled “Bad Science”.
March 22nd, 2007 at 5:26 am
hasn’t that book already come out?
or am i thinking of a different one?
March 22nd, 2007 at 11:10 am
DDT use for malaria vector control has never been banned. Rather, its
effectiveness was greatly reduced due to the evolution of resistance,
a problem caused in part by decades of extravagant use for
agricultural pest control.